When man-eater Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy.

After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £50,000 prize?

Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes.

Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end?[Goodreads]

This sounds like such a fab read I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

The Company. Military institution, protector of Praeton and the nation of Grand Isle. Dirty rotten thief.

When Pandora Bramble steps aboard the Company’s premiere airship Daedalus it’s not for the exclusive VIP tour. It’s to secure proof that the Company stole the regulator valve her father designed—even if it means tearing the engine apart. Foiled by the unexpected appearance of a handsome crew member, she despairs of ever getting another chance—until he kisses her.

Captain Theolonius Hatch, sentenced to engine room duty for refusing to take part in the Company’s fleet week activities, never dreamed a woman like Pandora existed. Her brains match her beauty, a combination that adds up to more trouble than he ever expected.

As Pandora allows Theolonius to sweep her into a whirlwind courtship, her wildest dreams come true. As do her greatest fears, leaving her to decide what matters most. Loyalty…or love.

The clock is ticking.

Warning: This book contains airships, mechanical owls, women who are good with tools, men in and out of uniform, steam generated by engines and people, and some hot carriage scenes.

Mistletoe and the Lost Stiletto
by Liz Fielding
Publication date: November 2010

Lucy Bright can't believe it when she's plucked from secretarial obscurity and transformed into the pampered fiancée of a slick retail guru. But then she discovers it was all a publicity stunt! Rushing away from the media frenzy, she bumps - literally - into delicious tycoon Nathaniel Hart...

Spooked by their instantaneous chemistry, Lucy flees - but Nathaniel is determined to find his barefoot beauty. Though all he has is one very expensive red designer stiletto to help him!

Monday, 11 October 2010

Fabulous at Fifty, a memoir of the first half century of the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA), will be launched at the RAF Club in London on Thursday. Fabulous at Fifty delves into the past, with first-hand recollections of people who were there, and describes the growth of the Romantic Novelists’ Association into what was described by PD James at a recent Awards ceremony as ‘one of most professional writers’ organisations of the present day’.

The book is packed with fascinating and frank detail about past and present members, the opinion of other novelists (often less than flattering) about this massively successful commercial genre, the changing attitude to sex and a public broadside from Marje Proops in the Mirror, plus the spats, the flaps, the End of Publishing as we Know It (1968), hot books and cold champagne.